Sandwich Club: Portuguese bifana

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A weekly series dedicated to anything that fits on a piece of bread. We deconstruct a different sandwich each week – from Mexican tortas to Lebanese pita kebabs to lobster guédilles – and tell you where to find it and what goes into making it. This week:

Bifana, $4.75 at Bifana Express in the Plateau

MONTREAL - The bifana is a classic among Portugal’s meat and bread combos. It’s the focus at Bifana Express, launched a couple of months ago by the Oliveira brothers, Derek and Rudy, and their mother, Lucia Furtado, who is at the stove. It’s no coincidence that the minuscule location – the lunch counter is the size of a food truck – is in the heart of Montreal’s old Portuguese neighbourhood, not far from Santa Cruz Church, scene of so many summer festas.

“The idea was that everyone was waiting for feast day to get their bifana at the Portuguese church, so we thought we’d offer it all the time,” one of the sons told me. There are more refined versions of this pork sandwich in town, but this is what you’d get at the Furtado house if you stopped in to chat about, say, penalty kicks.

The bread: Portuguese rolls (A), like the ones used here from Pâtisserie Guizot, are distinctly crusty, puffy and floury. Their oblong shape has a characteristic indentation along the top. The buns are called papo secos, roughly meaning dry throat.

The spread: Sliced pork (B) is marinated for 24 hours in a tangy mixture of wine, pepper paste, paprika, bay leaves, tomato paste and garlic. It’s cooked in oil in a frying pan, here on an electric stovetop. The most traditional bifana has just the meat, Furtado notes. However, she suggests personalizing it with house sauce (C), a bell pepper and tomato stew finished with a cap of vinegar, which the family has long used as a side for dishes like fish.

The secret: Surprisingly, given its size, Bifana Express has a liquor licence and a miniature patio, where you can sit and sip while watching traffic go by or drowning your Euro 2012 woes. “Red wine for the older generation, beer for the younger one,” Furtado says.

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